In less than 4 years your own personal devices will be so sophisticated that they’ll know more information about you than the closest people around you. This is just one of the many scenarios that are in front of us thanks to the advancements made by artificial intelligence. Machine learning is moving towards these advancements and for better or worse it is going to play a huge role in the world’s most important industries. And more and more IT professionals are shifting their careers in this sector that is only destined to grow.

Can we give a definition to machine learning and why do we have to pay attention to it? On a large scale, we can say that machine learning models are an application of AI in which algorithms independently predict outcomes. To get an idea of what we are talking about, machine learning takes advantage of these models that are capable to process large datasets extract insights and make accurate predictions without the need for much human intervention.

Many of this models implement machine learning with r and it’s no wonder that a lot of programmers choose to take a machine learning course to advance in their career or change their professional ladder altogether.

Going back to what machine learning is, we can state that many value-generating implications result from the accelerated development of this technology, and many are poised to radically streamline the business world.

In this article, you will find 5 new applications that are certain to change our day to day life in the nearest future, at least our business life at the beginning.

Reviews that can make or break businesses

Now more than ever people go online and browse sites such as Yelp to look at the reviews other customers left for a certain restaurant and make up their mind and choose which venue they will spend the evening at. Yelp knows that and in the last couple of years, it has implemented machine learning to better its picture classification technology. Yelp’s machine learning algorithms help the company’s human staff to compile, categorize, and label images more efficiently. It will surely make a big difference when choosing a restaurant and when complaining about it!

The moment an algorithm understands your diagnosis.

Big Data and data science are already making a revolution by leaps and bounds in the healthcare sector. But what if incredibly accurate machine learning algorithms were capable to process large sets of healthcare data without breaching confidentiality contracts? what if a couple of lines of code could give you the results of your analysis or diagnosis, could tell you if you are at risk for particular diseases or genetic issues?

Now, this scenario may become a reality in the near future as Dr. Ed Corbett says in a recent scientific paper: “It’s clear that machine learning puts another arrow in the quiver of clinical decision making.

“Machine learning in medicine has recently made headlines,” said Corbett, the medical officer at Health Catalyst. “Google has developed a machine learning algorithm to help identify cancerous tumors on mammograms. Stanford is using a deep learning algorithm to identify skin cancer.”

The retail store that already knows what you’ll buy tomorrow

Do you need another incentive to learn machine learning? Just think for a minute about this statistic: the international retail sector has consistently generated over $20 trillion in sales a year for the past few years. This not only testifies that well being of this industry but also tells you that retail and online retail stores are gathering millions of raw and consumer-behavior data that could be split into consumer shopping patterns and tendencies. And yet, many enterprises are not taking advantage of this incredible amount of information, that’s why your role as programmer or engineer with a machine learning course come to play. There is a massive opportunity to implement machine learning models that enable retailers to better understand their customers and provide a more personalized customer experience.

Thanks to this well of data, you could enable any retailer with the ability to provide recommendations for the end user or better impact the whole customer’s journey, from his first visit to purchase, to the subsequent follow-up.

Separating chaff from the wheat in content and news delivery.

The case of fake news invading our social media feed has escalated to a point where Facebook announced that they will hire 3000 employees with the only purpose to monitor the platform’s newsfeed. The curation of content is not only a problem for Facebook and Twitter though. Other Silicon Valley giants like Google are creating teams of experts with the only intent to stop fake news from spreading.

Emerging machine learning and AI platforms, such as Orions Systems, are providing proprietary systems to “grow and adapt the interactions between humans and artificial intelligence” for tasks like moderating content at scale.

Taking a new stand against cybercrime

Recent studies have found out that cybercrime will cost to enterprises and companies more than 6$ trillion per year by 2021. It says that companies will invest over 1$ trillion in cybersecurity within that same year to prevent cyber attacks and data breaches. Researchers are developing clever ways to implement machine learning models to detect fraud, prevent phishing and defend against cyber attacks.

It is clear that machine learning is opening the doors to an exciting and interesting field for programmers and IT professionals. Taking a machine learning online course will benefit your career and give you the possibility to work in an ever-changing field and in different business verticals.